Of 11,000 men 8,000 of them were between the ages of 18 and  29.

There was one of thirteen, and three were fourteen; 31 were fifteen; 200 were sixteen; 366 were seventeen; and about a thousand were eighteen. Almost 1,800
were in their thirties, about 400 in their forties, and 86 in their fifties. One man was seventy, and another, seventy-three.

Most of the youths of tender age slipped in as musicians. There are numerous tales of buglers too small to climb into saddles unaided, who rode  into pistol-and-saber battles with their regiments. 

No one knows the identity of the war's youngest soldier, but on the Confederate side, in particular, there was a rush of claimants. Some of their tales belong with the war's epic literature:

George S. Lamkin of Winona, Mississippi, joined Stanford's Mississippi Battery when he was eleven, and before his twelfth birthday was severely wounded at Shiloh.

T.D. Claiborne, who left Virginia Military Institute at thirteen, in 1861 reportedly became captain of the 18th Virginia that year, and was killed in 1864, at seventeen. 

E.G. Baxter, of Clark County, Kentucky, is recorded as enlisting in Company A, 7th Kentucky Cavalry in June, 1862,when he was not quite thirteen (birth date: September 10, 1849), and a year later was a second lieutenant.

T.G. Bean, of Pickensville, Alabama, was probably the wars most youthful recruiter. He organized two companies at the University of Alabama in 1861, when he was thirteen, though he did not get into service until two years later, when he served as adjutant of the cadet corps taken into the Confederate armies.

M.W. Jewett, of Ivanhoe, Virginia, is said to have been a private in the 59th Virginia at thirteen, serving at Charleston, South Carolina, in Florida, and at the siege of Petersburg.

W.D. Peak, of Oliver Springs, Tennessee, was fourteen when he joined Company A, 26th Tennessee, and Matthew J. McDonald, of Company I, 1st Georgia Cavalry, began service at the same age.

 John T. Mason of Fairfax County, Virginia, went through the first battle of Manassas as a "marker"for the files of the 17th Virginia at age fourteen, was soon trained as a midshipman in the tiny Confederate Navy, and was aboard the famed cruiser Shenandoah.
 

Had the South in her border
A hero to spare,
Or a heart at her altar,
Lo! its life's blood was there!
And the black battle-grime
Might never disguise
The smile of the South
On the lips and the eyes
Of her barefooted boys!

There's a grandeur in fight,
And a terror the while,
But none like the light
Of that terrible smile --
The smile of the South,
When the storm-cloud unrolls
The lightening that loosens
The wrath in the souls
Of her barefooted boys!

It withered the foe
Like the red light that runs
Through the dead forest leaves,
And he fled from his guns!
Grew the smile to a laugh,
Rose the laugh to a yell.
As the iron-clad hoofs
Clattered back into Hell
From our barefooted boys! 
 

Southern Glory (Home)

Albert Sidney Johnston

Grandpa Allen

While you're here
(The Confederate Flag Issue)

Sweetmamapam's Southern Hospitality